Just an ordinary first week of the year…

Jet lag is slowly disappearing to the back of my mind (so that it can come back next week in the Far East). Morning starts with a walk with the foresters around our new office. There is 14 km of walking paths around our new house. Early morning we had the first meeting with the other renters. Meetings to prepare for new assignments in the afternoon, highlights: IKEA hires in Australia new personnel through advertisements in the boxes of the Billy bookshelves and a favorite client becomes truly ambitious: everybody must be paid in time!

Deep Dive in the world of Micro Credit with great people from FMO. Their ambition is to double their impact with halving their footprint. What does this mean for Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka where I’ll be next week? Afternoon a Skype call with my masterclass coaching group. I am a bit stuck with our book about personal transformation and the role of peer group coaching. So we discuss reincarnation, letting go of old images of ourselves and deadlines for contributions to the book. I feel inspired afterwards. Another Skype call with Sri Lanka to prepare the workshops we will facilitate. Great to hear their voices again.

Thursday

And how does Triodos Bank think about Micro Credit (did you see their new campaign)? Great dialogue and they won’t step in if the PAR (Portfolio At Risk) is more than five percent. That is transparent and pretty clear. Great suggestions for the composition of the shareholder group and the board of Finance Institutions in far away countries. The afternoon intakes for our HR assignment end up in great dialogues: ‘I knew when I was 12 that I wanted to leave a better world than when I was born. And I am on my way.’ And: ‘It might look that I am talking about somebody else, but in fact I am talking about myself. I just didn’t know any better and am keen to learn how to improve.’ Nice traffic jam (has been a long time ago) to reflect. The works council (!) of a multinational calls me in the car if I can help them with a transformation plan for their organization since their management is too short term focussed.

Friday

Sometime before sunrise: getting leather bands to repair my second hand Barcelona chairs for our new office. Meeting how we decorate our new office and then intake with a new client. Another prep meeting about Strategic HR in the afternoon. Never a dull moment. And if you take every morning some time to meditate than it’s even not a hectic week…